Pain Points In Marketing

When a potential client comes to Legiit to browse freelancers, they aren’t looking for services. They are looking for a solution.

If you’re struggling to get the sales that you want, it may have nothing at all to do with the quality of your service. Instead, it may be that you aren’t using pain points in marketing well enough to make it clear to clients that you are the best solution to their problem.

What Is a Pain Point?

Before you can start using pain points in marketing your freelance services, you’ve got to understand what the term means.

In essence, a pain point is a specific problem that your customer is having. For example, a small business owner looking to hire a freelance blogger isn’t just doing it because they want more content. Their specific pain points could be all these and more:

• They need to drive more organic traffic on Google.
• They want to frame their company as a leader in the industry.
• They are trying to engage their audience more on social media.

So when this customer goes swimming through the vast sea of freelance writers on Legiit, the ones who will make their short list are the ones who make it clear that they can solve those problems.

How To Identify Customer Pain Points

The first step to using pain points in marketing your services is to figure out what they are, of course. Here are some tried and true ways to identify customer pain points:

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes.

Imagine who your ideal client is. Spend some time thinking about the struggles they go through on a daily basis.  

Write down every potential pain point that you can think of, even the ones that don’t seem to pertain to your services. Brainstorming is all about generating as many ideas as possible in order to find a few true gems. If you get too nit-picky about it, you’ll stall the creative process.

Focus on the different types of pain points.

Pain points are often classified into different types. If you think of them in these categories, it may help you consider new angles:

• Financial pain points revolve around your customer spending more money than they want or need to.
• Process pain points are problems that clients experience as a result of holes or inefficiencies in their standard operating procedures.
• Productivity pain points involve your customer spending more time or sacrificing more convenience than they would like to.

Ask your customers.

Of course, no one knows about the troubles your clients are experiencing better than they do. So if you have the opportunity to survey your clients or even converse with them one-on-one, take it. You’ll probably learn a lot more about what people are using your services for and what you can do to make them even better.

How To Use Pain Points in Marketing Your Freelance Services

Once you have identified your customer pain points, it’s just a matter of framing the services you already offer as clear solutions to these pressing problems.

You don’t just do graphic design, you create branded images that are sized for immediate sharing on social media. You don’t just write content, you offer full-service blog management with a goal of increasing organic traffic.

To help you get a better idea of how to market your own services, here are a few in-depth examples of freelance services that solve problems.

4 Examples of Freelance Services That Solve Problems

On-Page SEO Audit With Action Plan

Lots of freelance SEOs offer on-page audits. But what is it that clients are really looking for when they need this kind of service?

They are looking for a way to increase their rankings. Odds are good that they have already used link building services  and aren’t seeing the results they expected. So they are looking for changes to make to their own site to get the needle moving.

By framing your audits as an action plan that offers customers a clear series of steps to take, you can much better get at the root of their most pressing pain point.

DFY Lead Gen Sites

Lead generation is popular in some SEO circles because it doesn’t require as much work when it comes to client management. But people who are looking to scale this business model can’t spend all day creating all of their lead generation websites.

That’s why many freelance web designers have specialized their offerings to specifically tailor to this customer’s needs. You might think “a website is a website”, but a client who is looking to build lead gen sites en masse is looking for someone who is familiar with the nuances of designing for this particular niche.

Surfer-Optimized Content

Surfer is a tool that has revolutionized the way SEO content is written. It provides data-driven recommendations for the topics and keywords that should be covered in a piece of content that is trying to rank for a particular search term.

However, this also poses problems for content managers. If they want to utilize Surfer, they’ve either got to train their usual writers to use the tool, or make the changes themself. Both options require time that they probably aren’t looking to waste.

So many freelance writers are solving this pain point by offering Surfer-optimized content. The client doesn’t even need to pay for the tool because the freelancer has already invested in it. So customers can get the content they need without any extra expense or effort.

KGR Keyword Research

Keyword research is the starting point of any serious content marketing and SEO campaign. But for a new website, it can be difficult to rank quickly for very competitive keywords. These clients have a very specific pain point: they want keywords that they can rank for without having to wait months or years.

One way that freelancers who offer keyword research serve this sort of customer is through KGR keywords. KGR stands for “keyword golden ratio”, and it refers to search terms with very little direct competition compared to their search volume. Often, people are able to rank on the first page quickly with very little extra work when targeting KGR terms.

What Pain Points Are You Solving?

It’s time to stop thinking of yourself as simply someone who offers services. You are a professional who solves problems.

So identify your customer pain points and start framing your marketing efforts around them. Your wallet and your clients will thank you for it.